This exhibit of historical photographs and text was first commissioned for the 1997 In Guitar festival in Dubendorf Switzerland. Musician and writer Del Rey unearthed an exciting array of guitarists from parlor music to bebop. She dug through archives, interviewed family members and scoured the Internet for the stories and music of these unjustly neglected musicians.

The exhibit incorporates text biographies of women guitarists in American popular music with ten 20 x 24 inch photographs. Accompanying the photographic exhibit is a video of rare archival film shorts showing the work of Mary Osborne, Mary Kay, Rosetta Tharpe and others. The Women With Guitar exhibit can be shown in conjunction with a live concert/lecture from guitarist Del Rey on the broader subject of Women In American Music.

Vahdah Olcott Bickford Revere (1885-1980) primarily a classical player, she had a great interest in “parlor music”, a combination of classics and popular songs of
the day.

Memphis Minnie (1897-1973) recorded over 200 sides between 1929 and 1949.

Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973) and Mary Deloatch both had peculiar crossover careers between gospel and secular music.

Mary Osborne (1910-1989) was a bebop guitarist who worked on 52nd Street in the forties
and fifties.

Mary Kay played jazz and pop music from Las Vegas to the Sunset Strip in the fifties.

Lydia Mendoza first recorded in 1928, her guitar and vocals developing from the rich mixture of border culture and music in the Southwestern USA.

Maybelle Carter played a distinctive style of country guitar that became the traditional sound for several generations of muscians.